Sierra Leone's head of Ebola says the country has only four cases of Ebola and he is hopeful the countdown to zero can soon begin.

National Emergency Response Center chief Alfred Palo Conteh said Thursday that two of those cases have proven negative after treatments, and the other two in the northern Tonkolili district are in treatment. Sierra Leone quarantined 500 people in the district after a man died from Ebola the other week. The area had not seen the deadly virus for months.

From storied Fenway Park to youth baseball diamonds across the city, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh is calling for a ban on dip, snuff and chewing tobacco.

With former Red Sox pitcher and mouth cancer survivor Curt Schilling at his side, the mayor on Wednesday proposed banning smokeless tobacco products from all city professional and amateur athletic venues.

Kellogg's will ban artificial flavors and colors from all of its cereals worldwide including Special K and Frosted Flakes, it said Wednesday.

The American food multinational said its transition to all-natural ingredients in its cereals and snack bars should be done by 2018.

A surgeon on the job is five times more likely to repeat a request when music is playing in the operating theater, says a study casting doubt on the wisdom of this common practice.

“Music in the operating theater can interfere with team communication, but is seldom recognized as a potential safety hazard,” said the study, published on Wednesday in the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Lucien Yekpon, a Lome traditional healer, sat on a stool surrounded by fetish objects -- skulls, feathers, statuettes -- to place his hand on the head of a patient and recite incantations.

"You will soon be completely cured," Yekpon told the 35-year-old visitor, who had traveled to Togo from neighboring Benin to seek a remedy for migraine that dogged him for three years.

Eating spicy food, especially fresh chilli, has been linked to a lower risk of death in a Chinese study, researchers said Tuesday.

But they cautioned it was too early to draw a final conclusion on the potential benefits of fiery fare, and urged further research that may lead to "updated dietary recommendations".

The contraceptive pill has prevented some 200,000 cases of womb cancer over the last decade in rich nations alone, according to research published Wednesday.

A study in the medical journal The Lancet Oncology found that taking "the pill" over an extended period provided protection against endometrial cancer, which affects the womb.  

Simple coordination between hospitals, nursing homes and health authorities could slash the number of drug-resistant "superbug" infections and save thousands of U.S. lives, experts said Tuesday.

Hospitals and nursing homes strive to control infections but rarely report to one another when a patient being transferred is carrying antibiotic-resistant bacteria, greatly increasing the risk of spreading infections, said a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report.

Russia's food safety regulator said Tuesday that it had discovered horse, chicken and cow meat in a sample of pork mince sold at the popular French hypermarket chain Auchan.

Testing showed in addition to pork meat "horse DNA, chicken DNA and cattle DNA", the food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said in a statement on its website.

Researchers have identified a gene that helps people tolerate low-oxygen conditions, according to a study published Monday, opening the way for new treatments for heart failure and related conditions.

"This is the first demonstration that a gene involved in high altitude adaptation is critical in protecting cardiac function in moderate to severe hypoxia at sea level," said lead author Gabriel Haddad, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California at San Diego.